


in me, you can

by manticoremoons



Category: Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 02:42:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manticoremoons/pseuds/manticoremoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In order to fight monsters, we created monsters of our own. We needed a new weapon. The Jaeger Program was born. Two pilots, our minds, our memories connected. And in the machine, we become one."</p><p>It's 2064 and the world is a scary place. The <i>kaiju</i> have returned, and the humans have marshaled their defenses to fight back once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in me, you can

**Author's Note:**

> Dear readers, I watched Pacific Rim last week, and this is what happened. If you have not watched or heard about _Pacific Rim_ then I highly recommend that you watch [these trailers](http://www.ranker.com/list/pacific-rim-movie-quotes/movie-and-tv-quotes) to get a firm sense of the world, the jaegers and the concept of drift compatibility before you start reading (it won't take more than six minutes). While this story is set several decades in the future of the world we see in the film and the novelization (early 2020s), I've tried to keep any shifts contained.
> 
> I've also tried to stick with Guillermo del Toro's approach of not making this overly jingoistic or militaristic (except for the cheesy voice-over-like introduction), so rangers or pilots are referred to as Mr or Ms, the only rank we hear is that of "Marshal" - in case that's confusing. There is a cameo of one character from the film, Mako, because I couldn't resist. All titles and subtitles are stolen from snatches of lyrics from The Black Keys _Brothers_ album, for no other reason than that was what I was listening to when I was writing. Played with the boys' ages, Liam is oldest, just so you know. My apologies for any egregious mistakes, I've read over it a jillion times and the words are swimming already.
> 
> Thank you, Bee, who is a wondrous writer, for taking the time to read this and give me feedback. To those who read passed this obnoxiously long note, I hope you all enjoy "canceling the apocalypse" - again.

 

**DRIFT** **:** (slang) A joint vision shared by Jaeger crew members while directly linked via the Pons; triggered by subconscious stimuli, a generally involuntary but seldom debilitating phenomenon.

 

 

 

** a brief history: it’s all i see these days **

For thirty or forty years, the world existed in relative peace, the _kaiju_ portal destroyed, and some—many—began to forget what it was like to live with the constant threat of annihilation, with war ever on the horizon. The United Nations started to rebuild. The Exclusion Zones on the edges of the Pacific seaboard lay destroyed, uninhabitable land too soaked up with nukes and poisonous _kaiju_ gunk for anyone to live there. Until they returned. Bigger and more lethal than ever before, entry into our dimension no longer limited to the Marianas and other tectonic fissures in the earth’s core. The Pan Pacific Defence Corps introduced a second official initiative, called the International Jaeger Pilot Programme (IJPP). This time around, the jaegers were sleeker and stronger, panther-like and agile. Their rangers were carefully-trained and out of those selected, only a few given the honour (some might not call it something so lofty) of piloting a jaeger. Stations were set up to guard all the major cities of the world as we knew it with pilots and personnel tasked with the job of protecting the last few pockets of human life. It wasn’t an easy job, or even enviable. Long, long hours or even days of patrol, often deep on the ocean floor or scarred landscapes that stretched for miles in every direction. You were lucky if you lived to see thirty, you might've wondered once or twice, if it wasn't better to have died with your brother or your sister, your mother, the boy you knew in grammar school. The stink of kaiju blood was as familiar as air to any kid under five. But still, people survived as we always do.   


For a pilot, it all depended on whether you could find a person to fight with,  _drift_ with. Without that, you were useless, grounded. You needed to be—

Drift compatible.

_Hong Kong, Spring 2064_

 

**how we’re made**

If you could pick anyone out of a line-up to be a ranger, a good one at that—the last person you’d point to would be Harry Styles. The kid was clumsier than a drunken baby giraffe, all gangly limbs and lurching knock-kneed feet.

Until you put him in a Conn-Pod and strapped him up tight, that is. Then he was a different animal altogether, the transformation almost scarily absolute. If you didn’t know him well enough, you might even think it was two different people. The earnest, green-eyed guy who always seemed ready to offer the closest stranger a share of his roasted peanuts, or a slice of the apple he was crunching on, who seemed capable of charming even a horn-headed _kaiju_ with a dimpled smile and a toss of the chaotic curls crowning his head, likely had everyone eating out of the palm of his hand. He was also a born flirt, so it was highly probable that he _had_ , in fact, held every man and woman in the Shatterdome in the palm of his hand. And then his harder, more focused doppelganger, _Mr Styles_ , who took too many risks, was unpredictable and often unmanageable. Unstable, too.

Being a cocksure ranger with a too-ready smile, a personality that could best be described as ‘odd’ by anyone who’d ever even tried to pilot with him, and a brutal but unpredictable elegance with the jaegers—didn’t always make for an ideal partner. He’d burned a hole in the engine room and practically destroyed three jaegers. Marshal Liam Payne can admit a mild exaggeration on that front, Styles’d only shot _at_ two jaegers and thankfully missed. But there was no denying that those first, second and third attempts to pair him up with someone had gone disastrously. And they couldn’t afford mistakes like that, not when building even one robot cost the arms, legs and brains of several hundred people.

He furrows his brows at the folder on his desk. The team is spread thin and he needs to assign someone to Styles, someone capable of bringing him back during the mind-meld even when he slips in the dark currents and falls down the rabbit-hole—one with which Payne himself is painfully familiar. But he’ll be damned if he can figure out who.

He looks at the scant pile of possibilities. His eyes light on the name second from the top, and he flicks the folder open. A grave, sharp-featured face looks up from the grainy photograph, the glint of an earring just making it through, broad shoulders in the lightweight government-issue armour. He sighs.

This is the worst idea he’s probably ever had. But he has little choice in the matter. He makes the call, sits back heavily in his worn leather chair, the broken spring in the back of it digging into his spine familiarly. One more person at trials can’t hurt anyone even though he’s fairly confident that this man would be the worst possible choice for someone like Harry.

**the devil’s listening**

 

Harry Styles doesn’t sleep. Not regularly that is. Sometimes he can go three days without shutting down for longer than a second, until his eyes are red-rimmed, his fingers jittery, all the muscles in his body hopped up on enough caffeine to drive a horse mad. Or enough alcohol to knock out a _kaiju_ —it all depends on the day and his mood.

He’s trying to forget, today. A face, lots of faces really.

His bar of choice tonight, _The Mixer_ , sits right at the end of Tull Street, and he has to walk through the cacophony of neon-lit stores that line either side for a good mile, everything from _kaiju_ memorabilia to shiny sex toys to steaming pans of sticky-fried noodles and beef kebabs to faux-vintage clothes from the noughties to the twenty-twenties, the kind of stuff you can get on the cheap if you’re willing to bargain. Clubs with pulsing music that put a hop to his step, the click of his frayed boots drowned out by all the sounds around him.

He greets familiar faces as he goes—the amount of time he spends on Tull and all the streets around the Amber District makes it so he _should_ damn well know every nook and cranny of this half-crumbled part of the city, and every person in it.

It’s early yet when he finally gets to where he’s going. Still, a few people he recognises lurk in _The Mixer_ ’s low lights. Andy the Arsehole is playing pool in the corner and laughing noisily at what’s probably his own joke—Harry doesn’t tend to dislike people but that Andy guy is a real pill. Stan, a kid he went through training with but who ended up as a mechanic when he tested too low on pilot scores is sitting in a big group of people in the corner. He waves reluctantly in Harry’s direction. It’s obvious he’s trying to be friendly but not friendly enough to actually invite Harry to join them. Harry doesn’t blame him—they got into a fight once when Stan caught Harry getting sloppy head from Alex, Stan’s non-boyfriend at the time. It hadn’t ended well and Stan still hasn’t forgiven him for that. Ben, an acquaintance whom Harry has seen naked probably more than is proper, is nursing a beer with a dark-haired woman that he’s almost entirely sure is his wife. She likely doesn’t know that Harry’s seen her husband nut like he’s trying to win the Olympics and from the way Ben is avoiding even glancing in Harry’s direction, he knows it’s going to stay that way.

Harry shrugs and heads straight to the bar and there’s Jesy, co-owner of _The Mixer_ and a good friend. He shoots her a dimpled grin. She puts down his favourite without having to ask and nods to let him know she’ll be back to chat when she can, right now she has customers to take care of.

He twirls the tumbler of blue cognac between his thumb and forefinger, watches the liquid jostle in its confines. One long sip and sooner than is probably wise, the tumbler’s empty. The burn spreads through his chest, his body starts to mellow out with the taste of it.

He signals for another double-shot and guzzles it down like it’s water and he’s a very parched man.

And then he does it again.

It’s like hand-to-hand combat training, he thinks, when he’s wilting in his seat on his fifth glass, now vodka, the cheap kind because he likes just how hard it scratches at his throat and makes his nose tingle. _Do, repeat, do, repeat, do, repeat_ —until you get it _pilot_ -perfect.

Harry’s nothing if not competitive. Even when the only person he’s up against is himself.

++++

“I think you’ve had enough, love.”

Harry grins and he has an idea that his face looks like it’s about to fall off the smile’s so wide, and he flops against the bar like an unwieldy sack of potatoes.

“No, no, no, nope—I’m not enough, Jesy,” he frowns because that’s not what he meant to say. But now he can’t remember what it is he wanted to say in the first place. He looks up at Jesy with her heart-shaped face and kind eyes lined with a dark colour that makes them stand out. He squints and points at her. “Your eyes are so big, you know that? And beautiful like looking into infinity, infinite eyes. Wanna get off in the backroom?”

She snorts and shakes her head and the movement makes him feel so dizzy he has to close his eyes, and scrunch his face against the sudden nausea roiling in his stomach. “Not in your wildest, dreams, Styles. Now get the fuck off your arse and go home before I make you.”

He nods as though she has said a very profound thing. Even through the haze of drunkenness, his brain has the foggy memory of Jesy giving him a black eye, although he can’t remember what for. She’s not someone to mess with that Jesy, not even a little. He wags his finger in her direction with a very confident. “One of these days, you’ll change your mind and it’ll be too late, let me tell you. Too late.”

Jesy looks at him, a pitying little slant to her pink lips like a sad, sad clown and Harry wants to pull the corners of her mouth upwards to force her to smile again. Drunk as he is, even he can recognise pity and how it creases a face in a way that offends him; it makes his befuddled hackles rise so sharply he might scream.

But he doesn’t. He just staggers off his stool and falls straight into a pair of wiry arms, and a voice with a barely-detectable lilt says, “All right, mate, I’m taking you home.”

“Niall!” Harry crows, missing the way Niall winces at the spume of alcohol-laced breath, and throws his arms around his best friend. “I’ve missed you, mate! Missed you! Why did you leave me, Niall? Everyone always—.”

Niall mumbles, “You saw me at lunch today.” He shoots an apologetic glance in Jesy’s direction and does his best to drag a wriggly-bodied Harry out the door. “Come on, you’ve got early call tomorrow.”

 

 

 

**my gears they grind**

Zayn was six when the world crumbled in on itself and the monsters came. The memories are as familiar as a well-loved book, he has run his fingers along the pages of them until they’ve frayed at the edges and faded, but always there in the heart of him.

He is playing with a set of marbles his father gave him, rolling them down the cracked pathway that leads to the red-painted front door of their house. His small-child hands place each marble down in the cracks, there are little tufts of grass sneaking through the cement and they’re pulling the fissures wider so his dad will have to fill them in again—but for now, there’s something very lived-in about it, home-like.

In his memory, there’s a soft, dreamy quality to the colour of everything that feels like sinking into a puddle of warm, warm water and it makes him want to stay and float in there forever, wallow in it, drown even.

His mum is standing by the kitchen window. Some days, the kitchen curtains stirring in the breeze are the colour of sunshine, pure and untainted yellow-gold; other days, they’re a mossy-green that reminds Zayn of cool summer mornings when the sun peeked through the clouds for even five minutes and the whole world seemed to smile; other days, they’re this vibrant peacock blue and all he wants is to run his hands along the length of them to test if they’re as silky as they look. But _ammi’s_ standing there, still and beautiful. Her face is kind; her smile is kind, too, even though he can’t quite make out the individual features. Her hair falls down her back in waves and it’s a lighter colour than his. His father comes up behind her, he’s burly like a cuddly bear, and he wraps his arms around her from behind until his hands rest on her slightly swollen abdomen. Six-year-old Zayn knows that there is another baby coming—he is sure that it’s a boy like him, and that he will be his best friend, and that they will play telephone together in the living room and cling to the trunks of his father’s legs like monkeys while his big hands reach down to tickle them. Doniya thinks that it’s a girl but she’s often wrong about things.

His father is beaming but Zayn can’t see his smile that clearly either.

Sometimes when he looks at their faces, it feels as if they’re far, far away and he wonders if he could just come a little closer, then he could see them, touch them. But he never can.

Doniya. There’s Doniya sitting on the front steps, surrounded by a litter of brown-haired, golden-skinned dolls with white-toothed grins. She’s laughing and speaking in little doll-voices, she takes one to tea, and offers another a biscuit, and compliments a little blond-haired one on her pretty red shoes. She looks just like him, with their father’s dark hair but she’s got big brown-brown eyes where Zayn has equally big green-brown eyes like their grandfather’s. At least he thinks she has, Doniya’s face is strange and blurry too.

And this is the point when the dream turns. Fades into something crueller, and the comforting warmth turns into ash, acrid taste of it tart on his tongue and his eyes water.

Doniya’s dolls smile still. Their faces stretch and melt like plastic before a flame until there’s nothing left but skeletons with death-grins and hollowed-out eyes. Doniya is gone but Zayn can hear her, a wet, long sob ripped from a childish throat.

 _Ammi_ is nothing but a charred stump in the shape of a body and he can see the glint of his father’s wedding ring, the fingers still linked, and bloody. There’s blood. Everywhere. And then there’s a gurgling scream—it sounds the way water does when it’s sliding down a rusty drain, an ugly, sucking sound that makes him cringe.

And then Zayn wakes up.

Waking up from his memories, from himself, is never the sudden jolt that a lot of people describe—after all, it’s not like he’s anything special around here. Everyone’s walking around with a sad story, a shitty tragic past that lives with them like a limb cut off at the shoulder, a hole that can’t be filled.

But when Zayn wakes up from the nightmares, he always feels like he’s drowning, thick and deep. He can feel the pressure of water filling his nostrils and ears, clogging up his mouth, his lungs until he can’t breathe except to choke. And there’s this tempting darkness at the edges of his dream-vision, even when he’s asleep, all he wants is to sink into it, drown, drown, drown until there’s nothing but blackness left. Nothing but _nothing_.

But he never drowns. Instead, he just wakes up and the first, congested breath he takes is painful and there’s a heavy feeling when he blinks his eyes open, stares at the water-stained ceiling, dried-up puddles splashed across dull-grey paint, above.

 _Disappointment_.

++++

 

He sits at the rather Spartan desk, which faces the wall of his room. No pictures, no fond memories spread out where anyone can see them—he doesn’t have many at all. Three books, his favourites, two on-loan from the library and one that belongs to him are mounted by the bulb-less lamp, possibly the only inklings one might have that anyone lives in here, at least at first glance. He’s lucky he managed to get a solo cabin, cramped as it is. Zayn doesn’t think he could manage to live in close quarters with someone else—it’d drive him crazy, really.

There is a bottle of what has to be pure jaeger engine fluid carefully packaged as whiskey. Zayn lets it burn all the way down his throat and the scorch of it rips away the lingering sluggishness his nightmares always bring. Not enough to get drunk. But just enough to not think.

He falls asleep again at 0300hrs, a deep, coma-like sleep. When the call comes in at 0700hrs, waking up is almost painful but he does it anyway. He washes his face at the dirt-speckled sink inside the matchbox bathroom attached to his room. He looks at his reflection in the mirror, dark circles under his eyes and the pale grey-face of someone who spends too much time inside a training complex and doesn’t see enough of the sun.

A damp hand swiped through his hair so it falls back from his forehead in a semblance of neatness, and he goes to his closet where his clothes hang tidily—grey, black, navy uniforms, t-shirts (all fifteen of them) folded in a pile on the lone shelf, combat boots in a line beneath. He picks steel grey fatigues, tucks the bottoms into his boots and a simple t-shirt with his name threaded in dark black on the front chest pocket. And heads out.

 

 

**going just to be sane**

“Harry, you understand that I can’t keep going out on a limb for you, right?” Liam Payne is angry, which is a sight in itself to behold because Liam is rarely ever angry. Or he’s just gotten pretty good at hiding it.

“I get it, Liam.” And that, calling his superior by first name while he’s slouched in his chair, a pair of sunglasses covering his beer-stung eyes, a hand pressed to the pounding ache in his head, says the exact opposite.

“I don’t think you _do_ get it, _Mr_ Styles.”

“I’m a screw-up, _Sir_ , but I’m not dumb.” Harry does feel guilty, he does. Being rude to anyone, let alone his superiors, isn’t something that comes naturally to him—he’s the charming one, right? He’s different with Liam, of course, and Niall, too. But that’s because he’s known the two of them longer than anyone else in the world—and they’re family or as close as. Usually he’s not this much of an asshole. But the hangover making mincemeat of his brains and everything else on top of it just makes him want to lash out at everything. “I screwed up. I’ve scared or pissed off pretty much every single pilot you’ve tried to pair with me—although, one of them was because he claimed I looked at him funny in the toilet, which I don’t think is a fair reason to ask for a transfer but whatever. And you’re running out of reasons to keep me around—believe me, I get it.”

He looks up through his glasses and even the darkened view they afford him doesn’t hide the way Liam’s gaze softens into that fucking puppy-dog pity he’s so good at doling out, sincerity dripping off his furrowed brow like acid. “Harry,” he starts.

Harry holds up his hand to ward him off before he can keep going, he’s almost entirely sure that he doesn’t want to hear this. He pulls off his sunglasses and blinks at the sudden invasion of light before he focuses on Liam. He sits up straight, the way a pilot’s supposed to sit—he would stand but he’s not quite up for that yet. “Marshal, with all due respect, every single person you’ve tried to pair me with was never going to work. I might have the kind of brain that lets people in easily enough to be deemed compatible but not one of them has been able to handle _me_.” _Or my issues_ , he thinks.

“Unless I can find someone—just any _one_ that can take it I—. Then maybe… maybe you should reassign Red Dragon.”

The thing is, no matter what shit he pulls, Harry does love to pilot—perhaps more than anything in the world. And Red Dragon, that’s the name they came up with together, it’s _theirs_. But maybe he’s too fucked, too broken for anyone to fit him quite right—not like she would have. And it’s _fine_. It’s just fine, he thinks. He’ll deal with it. He’ll take some time off, get a job. Maybe go on that trip around the world he always planned on taking, even though he never planned on doing it alone. Or work at _The Mixer_ —he certainly spends enough time there to be formally employed and he’s already made a gaming sport of drinking.

Liam nods. He won’t say it now because he knows what it means to Harry to even make the suggestion but he does agree. And, Harry thinks, Liam probably knows better than anyone else exactly how he feels.

There’s a knock on the door, and Harry makes to get up and leave but Liam gestures at him to sit down as he says out loud, “Come in.”

Harry remains seated in his chair, listening to the rubbery squeak of a pair of combat boots approaching the desk where he’s seated. When whoever it is comes to a clipped stop. Harry hears the tap of a salute, and then a slightly husky voice wish Liam good morning—perfect protocol. There’s nothing special about the voice, really. But it’s weird. Harry feels it, feather-light, in the pit of his stomach, a delicate pull on some part inside of him he didn’t know existed.

“Mr Malik, I’d like you to meet Mr Styles.” Harry looks up at the introduction as good manners dictate, a friendly grin settling on his face—he might as well try to be nice until Liam finally lets him leave to sort out his hangover in peace.

And when he meets the amber-cut eyes set in a serious face, all cheekbones and dark brows and a stubble painting a stubborn jaw, he stops.

 

++++

 

He has time to grab a quick breakfast—the mush they call oatmeal and a very big, very strong cup of tea. When he gets to the mess hall, Louis’ there at a table with a few other rangers, regaling them with a long, undoubtedly entertaining tale.

As soon as he spots Zayn, he waves at him enthusiastically. Zayn has little choice but to head that way and sit for a couple of minutes. It’s not that he doesn’t love Louis. It’s just that Louis can be exhausting even on the best of days. And Zayn’s head is throbbing just enough to make prolonged conversation a dreaded thing—at least until he’s got a gallon of caffeine in him.

Zayn doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the day he met Louis Tomlinson. A few years his senior, Louis had been flying jaegers for a good five years before Zayn was transferred to complete his training in Hong Kong. Back then, he’d been Marshal Payne’s co-pilot and probably the cockiest prick anyone could ever meet. Zayn hadn’t been looking where he was going, somewhat overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the Shatterdome and the row of jaegers idling against the wall like dozing giants. Louis had taken one look at him and laughed. “Are you lost, shrimp?” Zayn had glanced at the blue-eyed stranger in front of him and said, “I don’t eat shrimp, I’m allergic, mate.” And it had been possibly the most idiotic comeback anyone could’ve mustered—Zayn had always been pathetic at trash-talk. But Louis had burst out laughing anyways as though Zayn had said something deeply funny. And they’d been friends ever since.

They’re different, really different and perhaps that’s why it works. Louis is all bold impressions first, colours that leap out at you and blare until you have to blink, loud and occasionally rude while Zayn likes to be quiet, keep to himself, slide in the background of things where he can watch from a safe, clean distance. But not long after that first improbable day they met and clicked, he remembers sitting with Louis on a small mud-packed mound behind the barracks, one of Zayn’s first smoking hide-outs. It was an hour of target practice, aiming and shooting at busted cans that lay scattered by the rubbish heap back there, losing themselves in the _brap-tap-tap_ of gunfire. When they’d run out of bullets, they’d sat there for an hour and watched the sun drift to the horizon, the sky turn from a wash of orange and bleeding-yellow to deep, deep blue and the only thing to light the dark was the smouldering end of Zayn’s cigarette. They hadn’t spoken, hadn’t needed to. Just sat there together and drank in the quiet, and that was that.

“Hey, Malik, you look like shit this morning.”

“No worse than you, Tomlinson, no worse than you.”

Louis grins at the expected insult, and takes a bite of his charred toast. “What’s up with you today?”

Zayn shrugs. “I don’t know—I’ve got a meet with Payne in a few.” He doesn’t miss the way Louis’ shoulders stiffen at the mention of Marshal Payne’s name, his mouth pinching into a straight line.

That’s a story that Zayn’s never been able to get to the bottom of: what happened between Louis and his former co-pilot. He hadn’t ever seen them work a jaeger together but he’d heard the stories, how good of a team they’d made. Good enough that Payne made Marshal at the age of thirty-one which is almost unheard of, and that Louis’ probably one of the most respected rangers on the base whatever anyone thinks of him. But he’s seen the two of them interact—or rather _not_ -interact, seen the way Louis’ jaw tightens at the mere mention of his old partner, the way Payne’s eyes often stray in Louis’ direction before skittering away like a frightened deer’s, the way they orbit any space they occupy together in such a way that the two of them never meet in the middle. He hasn’t asked for an explanation. He figures he’ll hear the story one day when he’s got Louis drunk enough to drag secrets out of.

He inhales his tea and oatmeal, and hurries away from the mess hall with a quick “later” thrown over his shoulder.

 

++++

 

As soon as he steps into the Marshal’s office, Zayn notes how homey the room is, probably the most important room in the middle of this humongous steel-wrought Shatterdome. A thick rug that looks antique, a weathered oak desk covered in maps and log sheets, and piled files and folders near-teetering over the edge; a kettle in the corner where the roof dips low surrounded by mugs, tea and coffee things, a little can of condensed milk; a shelf, with a blue-and-black model jaeger and exactly one book, he can’t make out the title from where he is. There’s only a small window—more of an air vent that leaks in a few rays of morning light, otherwise, there are a few tungsten bulbs hanging from the low-beamed ceiling and it all adds to the cosiness. There’s something endearing about the care-worn feel to this room, it’s warm without feeling like anyone _tried_ to make it so, welcoming instead of foreboding.

He looks up into Payne’s face and he’s struck again at the walking contradiction that is this man. Dressed in his uniform, sharply-pressed and starched, his tie fits snug around his throat. He walks with a slight limp, the sort that one rarely notices because the guy’s so upright, so barrel-chested that his shoulders seem ready to burst out of his jacket sometimes, stern-faced enough that you know not to mess with him. But then he’s got these very soft, kind eyes that make him the sort people easily trust despite the hard exterior.

Zayn offers a quick salute and the Marshal responds accordingly before he gestures to the man—whom Zayn hadn’t even noticed until he’s pointed out—seated in one of two chairs in front of the desk. “Mr Malik, I’d like you to meet Mr Styles.”

Zayn meets the gaze of Mr Styles and freezes for a handful of seconds, nothing more. There’s something arresting about the liquid green eyes, the muddle of curly hair. His own eyes widen for a second, and it feels as though the world contracts inwards on itself and expands, fast enough to leave him a bit dizzy. And then he blinks and Mr Styles blinks too.

Marshal Payne clears his throat.

Zayn starts at the sound, remembers himself and where he is. Nodding in greeting, he straightens each vertebra in his spine and looks away from this Mr Styles. The next fifteen minutes are spent pretending _not_ to notice the man beside him, pretending _not_ to be aware of every twitch of the rangy body folded in the uncomfortable chair, pretending _not_ to sniff at the air to catch the faint scent of apples and something else sweet that seems to drift in his direction. To just _not_.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation is a blur. He responds as he’s expected to, inserts a “yes” or a “no” in all the right spots but his mind is elsewhere. Less than a metre away from himself, in fact.

“I want you both at trials today. 1100hrs sharp, understood?”

Zayn nods dumbly.

The guy, Mr Styles, smiles and stands up, makes a rather sloppy salute (Zayn notices) and heads to the doorway. Zayn follows.

When they’re standing outside, the door shut, he hears a throat clearing. He turns around and there’s Mr Styles watching him with a penetrating gaze that doesn’t match the easy grin at his mouth. Zayn feels something in his stomach lurch uncomfortably and he’s not quite sure what to do with it—he’s trying not to let his eyes linger too much on Mr Styles’ mouth, the hint of a dimple at his cheek.

“Name’s Harry, by the way, Harry Styles.”

Zayn nods but doesn’t offer his own name.

Mr Styles—Harry—nods too as if he’s answering a question only he can hear, and says, “I’ll see you at trials.”

Zayn watches him walk away, a jaunt to his step, long legs eating up the corridor and turning out of sight in little time. It’s only when the sound of footsteps has faded into silence that he releases the breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

 

 

**a different way to lose**

Harry’s a wildcard fighter, always has been. Never much for formal training, he’s not the kind to play by any sort of established rules of engagement—he just sort of throws himself into the thick of battle, no care for the usually-safe rhythm of a practice combat sequence. It throws people off. And by the time he’s waded through six newly-minted pilots, sweat making his hair cling wetly against his forehead and the nape of his neck, his bare chest heaving with exertion—he’s starting to get annoyed.

He’s also gathered a bit of an audience. There aren’t that many amusements in the Shatterdome so it’s hard for anyone to stay away from a good fight if one comes up, and he can hear hands slapping against palms and the crackle of notes exchanged as people start to place bets.

His foot taps on the ground, half-impatient and half-anxious because he’s waiting for _him_ to show up.

Trials are a more complicated process nowadays, set up in a four-corner circuit in the Kwoon. Harry’s already done all the solo tasks that examine stamina and competence, reflexes, retention of basic training and information manuals, the ability to reel off data on every brand of _kaiju_ currently-known, strategic prowess and the ability to think on one’s feet. The physical trials are arguably the most important part—you can have all the training you want but if you can’t fight, and most importantly, find a co-pilot (or two, in some cases), someone who can not only keep up with you but also drift _with_ you, then you’re grounded indefinitely.

His next opponent steps into the square and it’s Mr Malik—Zayn. He’d spent the better part of three hours tracking down Niall and asking him everything he knew about “Mr Malik”. Niall had been a surprisingly good source of information, given that his co-pilot was Louis Tomlinson who happened to be good friends with Zayn.

It’s funny because this morning wasn’t even the first time he’s seen Zayn Malik. He has a vague memory, a few years ago, he can’t even remember _when_ exactly. But he’d been at the train station for Gem and there was Zayn, just standing around waiting for someone or a ride, in his own little world, with a suitcase at his feet. Harry’d figured he was just some person who worked in the city but he’d been drawn to him anyway, stared more than was probably appropriate. It was a fleeting moment, forgettable. And he hadn’t expected to ever see him again.

And yet here he is.

Harry’s hard-put not to gape hungrily at all the exposed skin laid out in front of him. His stomach clenches at the punch of awareness that reverberates through his body. He’s not stupid; he knows there’s attraction in there. He thinks you’d probably need to not have a functioning brain to not be somewhat drawn to Zayn Malik. And with his lean chest, the ink of delicate wing tattoos across it that are a near mirror-match to the swallows Harry has drawn on his own, the black letters against the collarbone, sheened with sweat—he makes Harry a little breathless just to look at him. Like a frigging school boy with a crush.

“Hey, Styles, you gonna fight the guy or jump him?”

Harry grins at the joke, although he doesn’t recognise who said it, and tilts his head. “I’m just waiting for him to make a move.” He says it cockily and his smile widens when he notices Zayn’s eyes narrow. “Remember, it’s not a fight, Malik, it’s all about dialogue.”

He’s not prepared for the blur of movement and Zayn swiping his arm then his chest in a quick one-two tap of his bō. Zayn smiles and there’s something wolfish in the glint of his teeth, that makes a whorl of heat travel down Harry’s spine.

“Looks like you’re a bit of a slow- _talker_ there, Styles.”

Harry shakes his hair out and flips into a cartwheel, foot catching Zayn in the stomach so he falls onto the mat with a thud. He looms above his prone body, taps his chest with a satisfied grunt. “You sure you know how to keep up?”

He can see the competitive flash across Zayn’s face before the fight begins in earnest. Zayn throws him back with a jerk of his knee, rolls them over until he’s hovering on top of Harry this time. “2-1, Mr Styles.”

Harry doesn’t linger for even a second as he thrusts his hips upwards and knocks Zayn off balance.

The two of them snap to their feet quickly, and stalk around the perimeter of the square-shaped mat, fighting staffs in-hand, whirling in finger-nimble shapes. Zayn rushes him but Harry’s prepared, ducks beneath the bō flying at his face and swipes Zayn at the ankles so he falls to the carpet with a resounding thud. He runs the blunt end of his staff in a line from the centre of Zayn’s chest to the top of his belly-button where a trail of hair begins and leads down to the waistband of his trousers. He can see the way Zayn’s stomach clenches at the sinuous movement before he knocks at Harry’s bō and sweeps him off-balance.

Harry falls like a felled tree, and Zayn’s quick to straddle his hips and press his bō hard against Harry’s collarbone with a quiet, “3-2.”

They’re both breathing heavily, their bodies instinctively in-tune so that even when they drop each other, joints and muscles are ready to accommodate and absorb the force.

By this time, they might as well be the only two people in the room. Harry’s forgotten about the score, he’s forgotten about their audience, and every scrap of his attention is honed-in on the man above him. He drops his bō, and knocks Zayn’s hands, swivels his hips hard enough to turn them over so he’s on top, his fingers wrap around Zayn’s wrists and he raises them above his head, his knee digging into his stomach relentlessly.

Harry’s ahead at this point, and he says so, voice hoarse with effort and a little of his smugness seeping back.

He watches as Zayn’s teeth catch his lower lip and reflects the movement without even thinking, bites so hard that he can almost taste copper. He can’t look away, really.

And then Zayn’s flipping Harry over his head with springboard-legs, and using the momentum to somersault backwards until he’s on top again. He leans over Harry, and says with an undisguised note of triumph, “ _I_ win.”

 

++++

 

Zayn is lost in the moment. It’s a bit like he’s wading through melting candle wax, it hurts but it’s a good kind of thrill. He can feel the sweat on the body beneath his, the heat of it sears his hands, every patch of skin that makes contact burns and all he wants to do is—

A loud clap yanks him, and Harry, out of their shared trance. Zayn jerks back, and he’s suddenly awake to the wild cheering, and Marshal Payne’s voice directing them to get off the mat so the next pair can fight because he’s seen all he needs to see.

Zayn doesn’t want to think about what that means.

But he does stand up, so quickly, his blood takes a second to catch up with him. He steps back from Harry clumsily, waits for him to clamber to his feet, and bows, sharp and neat.

He doesn’t look at him though. He’s looked _too much_ , already. He backs away and strides through the group of lingering spectators. A few comments of congratulations come his way, and, “I can’t tell if they’re _drift_ compatible or _fuck_ compatible.” He ignores that remark and stumbles toward his room.

He did win, really. There’s satisfaction that comes with that.

But the stiffness between his legs and the good half hour he spends fucking into his own hand under the lukewarm trickle of his shower, the remembered-scent of Harry’s sweat and the citrus-flavoured deodorant or whatever it was he wore—say otherwise.

 

++++

 

Later, Zayn sits down to a miserable-looking plate of dinner—mashed potatoes that resemble papier-mâché, a piece of steak that’s perhaps a little too well-done, and string beans boiled limp.

Louis’ across from him, as usual, and he’s got a mischievous smirk on his face. He gives Zayn a considering look up and down, then says, “Heard about the show you and Styles put on, today. Sad I missed it.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything. If he was the blushing type, his cheeks might be a shade pinker—thankfully he isn’t. He does raise his middle finger and point it emphatically in Louis’ direction before taking a bite of his food.

 

 

**you’re runnin’ wild, you’re runnin’ wild**

Harry gets blind-drunk, rip-roaringly drunk, falling-off-his-chair drunk that night, tries to at least.

He’s not sure what he’s attempting to forget this time. Or who. _Whom_? Who? He was never very good at grammar.

That’s a lie, he knows full-well _who_. But he is _trying_ to forget that person so he’s not going to think about it. He’s going to have fun, and socialise with complete strangers, and fill himself up with drink thoroughly enough to pass out and not feel a thing.

 

++++

 

This time, Jesy doesn’t have to tell him to stop or quietly call Niall to come pick him up. Because by 2200hrs, Harry’s still not sloshed enough to stop thinking—to stop thinking about eyes that resemble the last dredge of whiskey still in his cup, or the solid weight of a body leaning above his, callused fingers at his throat, the way all of it made him _feel_.

And not just horny as a fucking goat. He starts giggling at that and the absurd image of himself bleating, a wispy of beard at his chin. Jesy looks at him a bit worriedly before going back to chatting to a customer.

But he felt it, the pull—a more intense sensation than the moment in Liam’s office, an even deeper, layered pull than the one he’d always felt with Gem.

And that. That’s what’s freaking him out.

He drinks the last of his double-shot, and stands up, makes his way back to the tiny room waiting for him, dark and empty and quiet as it is. There’s the curl of dread at the thought of it.

He’s always hated sleeping alone.

 

 

**we'll walk through fields where children play**

In another life, Zayn would _never_ have been a pilot of any sort. He’s sure of it.

When he was a kid, he’d been scared of heights for one. Used to cry at anything higher than a window ledge. And he distinctly remembers in the time before, a trip to an amusement park with his mother, the dizzying whirl of the rollercoaster ride, the pinnacle of which gave him a view of everything around for miles, from the waves crashing against the beach to his left to the lines and lines of red-roofed houses to his right. His stomach had dropped the second he’d seen the scope of it, the magnitude of the world around him, how comparatively small he was, and the weight of it crushing into his childish body like the waves pummelling the shore. He’d promptly started screaming and puked all over his bright green shoes.

Not so, now.

 

 

 

**and i’m bound to fall, bound to fall**

It doesn’t surprise anyone that he and Harry are paired together. But that doesn’t mean Zayn has to _like_ it.

++++

The first few weeks after rangers are partnered aren’t spent in the belly of a jaeger as one might expect. They’re spent in Synchronicity Training or SYNC.

It’s all well and good if you prove that there’s something there, chemistry, compatibility, whatever you want to call it.

But it—whatever _it_ is—has to be honed and tightened long before you even step into a Conn-Pod.

SYNC happens on multiple levels. Simulated neural bridge training sessions, one-on-one combat training to better understand how your bodies move in tandem, stuff like that.

And then there’s the other side of _getting to know each other_. A pilot can’t just understand how their partner moves or have the tepid first-taste of a neural handshake—simulated bridging is never as intense or even half as thorough as the real deal, the most you get is vague impressions and shadow-thoughts.

He or she has to _know_ them and let them know in return. In the old days, when there was no time for this kind of depth, there wasn’t room for this relatively long courtship. But research has shown that taking this amount of time to at least build some semblance of a relationship is better for the pilots and the jaegers in the long-run.

 

++++

 

Zayn does everything in his power to avoid being alone with Harry. It’s stupid and ridiculous, and he wouldn’t even be able to consciously acknowledge that he’s doing it.

But he is.

He’s so busy keeping himself contained that he doesn’t realise Harry’s doing the same.

 

++++

 

It’s their first neural simulation that puts paid to their clumsy attempts at dodging each other.

They don’t speak as they strap themselves into the simulators. When they’re both ready, Harry signs to the tech instructors to signal them to get started, and the countdown begins.

_Initialising neural handshake in 10 – 9 – 8 –_

Zayn’s heart beats hard and fast. He’s done this before, so has Harry. It’s not like this is anything new. It’ll be easy.

_7 – 6 – 5_

Harry doesn’t look at Zayn but he can feel him standing beside him, the solid presence of him. His fingers twitch and he has this irrational urge, to reach out and hold his hand.

_4 – 3_

He doesn’t reach out though.

_2 –_

It’s different this time, and they both know it.

_1 –_

The first plunge is always the worst. It feels something like falling and soaring high into the sky at a dizzying pace all at once. It’s been known to make virgin pilots vomit or fall into seizures on impact. Shared memories, aren’t a joke, they hit with all the force of a storey-high wave, and crush everything that tries to resist the pull.

But the two of them ride it out, ride out the flurry of images that move swiftly like the pages of a book fanning closed.

And then it’s like wading under water, there’s a heaviness, an opacity to it so you can’t see what’s in front of you or behind distinctly, just blurred shadows lurching, and sounds, muffled but there.

Zayn hears a scream, a crash of metal and glass, an explosion and smells the thick, choking stench of blood and ash. There’s pain, searing and awfully real for just a simulation, and it makes him feel as though he’s bleeding out right there in a pretend-Conn-Pod. His hands lift up to an imaginary wound at his heart, all crimson and fire-hued, as if to stop it.

Harry feels a crushing loneliness, it’s impenetrable and stormcloud-grey, he can’t even brush his hands through it, and it’s as immovable as a wall. It caves inwards and he can feel it filling his mouth like an oil-soaked gag, clogging his nostrils with a noxious stench and he wants to scream but he can’t.

And then they’re flung out of the simulation with a violent abruptness, the sort that leaves them both winded.

Zayn falls to his knees with the force of it, hands still clutched at his chest. And Harry’s hunched over, sucking in air as if his lungs have forgotten how to breathe.

They look at each other then and something darts between the two of them. They don’t need the neural transmitter to make sense of it or give it voice.

It just _is_.

And they both think, _this is what it means._

 _Drift compatibility_.

 

 

**i’m just one wishing**

Zayn walks out onto the ledge overlooking the dome-shaped restoration room, and glowers at the jaeger innards strewn across the floor, rusted parts of an engine, a large metallic foot notched in the ground like it was forgotten there by its errant leg, an arm raised in a fist as a flurry of mechanics tinker with the electrical wires sticking out of its wrist like steel-cased veins.

He thinks there’s something beautiful about jaegers and their component parts, and something sad too. Monstrous.

This has always been his favourite place to come and stew. There’s something about the noise, the constant flurry of busy bodies moving around each broken jaeger part like army-booted bees. There’s also something about their industry, the way they’re fixing things, pulling bits of machines apart and putting them back together again, and making them brighter, better, more powerful than before. Zayn thinks there’s a kind of simple, happy purpose here that’s hard to get anywhere else.

He digs his hand into his pocket and finds the lone cigarette stuck in the bottom-most corner. He’ll have to go out and buy some more rolling paper and tobacco—there goes half his month’s pay. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and brings his lighter close.

“How many times have I told you not to smoke in here, Mr Malik?” He stops short of lighting his cigarette for a second and then lights it any way, a smile playing on his lips.

He looks at the woman standing next to him, the ebony hair liberally streaked with grey and a patch of blue at the chin, the deceptively delicate body encased in military-issue black fatigues, and the name threaded into the breast pocket, Mako Mori. His smile grows wider and he nods in deference, his body relaxed. “Marshal Mori, I’m sorry—please forgive me.”

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “No you’re not but I like you so I’ll overlook your breach of conduct.”

“Appreciated, Ma’am, very much appreciated.”

Zayn met Mako Mori when he was a kid of sixteen, confused and angry and miserably alone. Scared too. When he saw her, she’d been nothing but this beautiful older lady with gentle eyes—the kind of eyes that reminded him of his mother, or what he imagined his mother’s eyes to be like. She’d been feeding the ducks in the pond outside of Liberation Square, a memorial built for jaeger pilots slain in the First and Second Wars. She’d noticed him sitting on a bench, sketchbook in hand while he stared sullenly at the quacking furred creatures wading through the water and gestured to him, asked him whether he wanted to feed the ducks with her. Zayn remembers looking up into her gentle face and smiling for no reason at all. She had a way of doing that to a person—siphoning out whatever happiness there was to be had inside you with an unconscious, exacting precision.

And he’d stood next to her for an hour, just watching the ducks flap around and quack like mad every time a crumb came their way. And it was nice. Just that. Nice. Until then, Zayn hadn’t had much room for _nice_ things in his life. And he’d never forgotten.

Nor had she, when she accepted him for his last few semesters of training in the Hong Kong programme eight years later and told him with a wink that there was a pond just a few miles out if he ever wanted to take a walk.

“So, what brings you here? I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Zayn is brought out of his memory with the question and he watches her wander to her desk set in the corner of the Mark XIV Restoration & Resource Centre, nothing but a cubicle that allows her to look down into the bowels of the machine room below.

He is quiet for a moment and he takes a deep drag. Even the familiar taste of nicotine and the sweet slide of it down his throat isn’t enough to calm the nervous energy. “I got a co-pilot.”

She nods as though this isn’t much of a surprise—and it isn’t, she probably knows everything about anything that goes down inside the Shatterdome. More than anyone else in these ten square miles, this place is her home—she’s practically lived and worked here her whole life.

“What’s he like?”

A thousand complaints are on the tip of Zayn’s tongue—a thousand million snide remarks about Mr Harry Styles, and his silly hair and even sillier face and his cocky attitude, and the strange way he looks at people (by people, he means him), and his smile with that dimple in his left cheek that seems personally offensive to Zayn every time he sees it. But what he says is, “He’s… not what I expected.”

She smiles knowingly at him.

“What’s that smile about?”

“Nothing,” she says it with her eyebrows arched like question marks above a seemingly innocent expression but there’s a secretive curl to her mouth and Zayn is immediately suspicious.

“What?”

“You’ll see,” is all she says and she nods at her computer. “Now, I believe you have combat training in about two minutes and thirty-six seconds. You better hurry or you’ll be late.”

 

 

**i can’t afford to lose**

It’s as if that first simulation is the key or the little child’s finger pulled out from the dyke or the lever, the switch, whatever you want to call it. And the wave of everything that comes with can’t be contained any more. All Harry can think about is _Zayn, Zayn, Zayn_.

He comes across him in the library, flipping through an old-looking book with an absorbed expression on his face. It’s cute, really, the way he chews on his bottom lip as he concentrates, notches a pair of spectacles on his nose and still somehow manages to be even more devastating to look at. All Harry can think about is how his jaw is covered in stubble, and how much he’d like to scratch his own chin against it, leave bruised. How he’d like to watch those lean cheeks bulge around his cock, feel that stubble tickle at his balls, pull out and rub his come all over it. It’s a bit overwhelming, these feelings, the urgency of them.

He turns sideways to surreptitiously adjust himself in his pants and avoid getting caught.

He does wish he could put it all down to that. To him being creepy and hiding behind a shelf of books so he can watch his co-pilot thumb his way through a book like some horny stalker, and then go back to his room and rub one (or several) out until he goes cross-eyed and passes out.

But it’s not just that, obviously.

He watches Zayn, and he _learns_ him, like he learned how to drive a jaeger, until every bit of information is engraved inside of him, becomes instinct.

He picks out all the contradictions that make him up. The way Zayn is cool and calm on the outside but every time they fight, his eyes fire up and he doesn’t like to lose. He’s maybe as bad a loser as Harry is. How Zayn always makes sure to have a scrap of bread from the mess hall in his pocket for when they run into Bullseye, the unofficial Shatterdome pet, a fat bulldog that totters on skinny legs and tends to leave steaming piles of shit wherever he pleases. Zayn loves dogs, will often sink to his haunches to pet Bullseye and feed him a corner of toast with the biggest grin on his face like it’s the best part of his day. How Zayn only shaves once a week—Harry can tell because one day he’ll show up his jaw completely bare of hair and it’s a bit jarring because it takes a good five years off of him. All Harry wants to do when that happens is lick his jawline, and taste how smooth the skin feels. But he likes it best at the end of the week, when Zayn’s on his way to a full beard. Those times, all he wants to do is feel the abrasion of it on every patch of skin he possesses.

He watches him a lot, is the thing. And it’s completely antithetical to everything he’s been for nearly two years.

 

See, Harry learned pretty early that it’s far easier to keep people at an arm’s length when you present a face, a happy face. A laughing face. A sweet, charming, open face. The sort of face that people can trust, study all the curved lines, the dimple-holes in his cheeks, the _pleases_ and _thank yous_ and decide that everything is just _fine_. It’s easier. He knows he’s got a bit of a rep in the base for anyone who cares to listen to that sort of thing. He’s heard what people say about him. Everything from unhinged, cracked in the head to asshole who can’t keep his dick in his pants, and far meaner words besides. But they don’t really know a thing about him, so he tries not to let any of it touch him. And he’s good at that.

He’d never be able to handle being Zayn. Zayn who walks around carrying his losses and loneliness like a cloak, like a scar on his face visible for anyone with two eyes or hands to see. But for Harry, the thought of people seeing him—the real him, so easily, is terrifying.

And that’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Zayn might seem like the mysterious sort, indecipherable, yet Harry can read him as easy as an open book. It’s all there for anyone who cares to look, to see beyond the quiet personality, the hollow stare he turns onto people he especially dislikes, the way the muscle in his jaw ticks when he’s frustrated or impatient, the slow blink when he’s trying not to snap out and yell. It’s there on the surface.

And it’s hilarious because Zayn thinks he’s so good at hiding, at folding himself up into a shell snail-like, at being invisible.

But Harry _saw_ him. Picked him out in a room full of people in the middle of a bus station and followed him out onto the street that one day two summers ago just _because_. Watched the way he hunched over against a wall and brought a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes out of his pocket with a shaky hand; felt his stomach melt a little at the way Zayn’s mouth pursed around the stick and the way his body seemed to slacken on the inhale, like just one breath-in had every muscle inside of him pooling at his feet. The little smile on his face as he took another drag, softening all those sharp angles. It was something like happiness. And he’d stood there across the street staring at this man, this stranger who didn’t even know he existed, taking in the simple, silly joy of a fucking hand-rolled cigarette.

(And Harry _hated_ cigarettes, always had. But he hadn’t then when he was watching from afar.)

The scarier thing though is how he catches Zayn looking at _him_ , seeing _him_ for what _he_ is. How he doesn’t seem to mind at all when that happens.

 

 

**mystery, is what this is to me**

Zayn finds Harry on the roof of one of the west-ward towers. He’s looking out at the sunset, lean form silhouetted against the fading light, slightly hunched, a golf club in his hand and about twenty white balls in a scatter at his feet.

He’s not sure why he came here. They’d been training all day, it’s not like he hadn’t seen him enough already.

But he’s finding that kind of logic doesn’t much matter these days.

He watches Harry for a moment, the way his hands grip the business end of the golf club, and he swings sharp and sudden, lets loose on one of the balls at his booted foot, and watches it soar high above and disappear down below.

Zayn’s never given a shit about golf in his life—most sports really, which is why he likes piloting so much. It’s a thousand times the power with a fraction of the actual effort it’d take to have a physical fight—he likes those odds.

“I know you’re here.” Harry says.

Zayn shrugs and walks forward, his non-existent cover blown. “I know.”

_Of course._

Harry looks at him and raises the club. “Do you play?” Zayn shakes his head, and Harry shrugs. “Would you like me to teach you?”

 _Not really_ , Zayn thinks but says. “Sure, why not.” He strolls to stand next to him and Harry pulls him in without asking.

They move together as though they’ve been doing so for years—and that’s part of it, isn’t it? This bone-deep familiarity.

He stands in front of Harry, and doesn’t stiffen (much) when he feels wiry arms wrap around him from behind, the length of a body against his back. He leans back though, his muscles melting, accommodating Harry’s wider torso and he almost slumps into the cage of limbs surrounding him.

Harry grips his hands, guides them around the handle of the club, their fingers intertwined. He pulls Zayn in closer, nudges his feet a little wider apart, for balance, Zayn assumes.

They’re breathing together naturally. Zayn can feel the skip of Harry’s heartbeat at his shoulder and it matches his own.

Harry’s hand lands on his hip, large and long-fingered, the tips of his fingers press in slightly and he whispers. “Keep your balance, and pull your arms up and back, twist at the waist but keep your hips steady.” Zayn’s eyes slide half-closed and he feels each plosive breath against his neck. Harry’s voice has this rasping quality that settles deep in Zayn’s gut, makes him want to wrap himself in it.

“And then swing. Don’t look down or think about where your club is going to go, just swing like you mean it, like you know the ball’s there—exactly where it’s supposed to be, and let it fly.”

Zayn breathes out, a rushed sort of exhalation, as if he’s just finished running a race. He does just as Harry says. Follows the pressure of the fingers digging into his hip, they drift around to his lower abdomen and rest there. He leans into the buttress-body behind him, winding at his waist and swings hard.

And misses.

Harry laughs at him, and Zayn laughs too, lets the club drop forgotten to the ground at their feet.

 

 

 

**what can i do?**

Zayn’s next to him now, fingers drumming a beat across his thigh as he puffs on a cigarette.

They’d hit all the golf balls out into the distance. Harry’ll have to bribe someone to help him collect the lot of them some time or else he’ll never get them back.

But he doesn’t think about that. Just watches the first few stars blink in the farthest corner of the sky, pinpricks of shimmering light. He watches Zayn too. Watches him raise the cigarette to his mouth again and blow the smoke out. He does try to be as sneaky in his scrutiny as possible.

And he thinks then, right this second, is when he starts to fall.

 

 

 

**little girl’s got a hold**

Marshal Payne wouldn’t describe himself as a nervous man. He’s personally helped take down over twenty _kaiju_ in his thirty-six years of living, that’s more than most people do in a lifetime. He oversees one of the biggest jaeger programme bases this side of the English Channel—which isn’t much of a ‘channel’ anymore given that there’s very little left of England. He’s a grown man for God’s sake, not that that would mean much to anyone. But he’s well beyond the age of being afraid of things or people, particularly people who come in petite, bespectacled packages with hair the colour of the deepest part of the ocean (a few months ago, it was definitely dark purple, and before that, he remembers it being tinged with ruby-red highlights). He’s not scared. At all.

That doesn’t explain the hitch in his throat when he hears the clip of combat boots, and catches a whiff of perfume that reminds him of the strawberry-flavoured bubble-gum he’d been addicted to as a child, blowing bubbles as big as his head until they popped in his face and he was left picking off sticky gunk for hours. It’s something he’s noticed along with the exact colour of her hair—that he can smell her, even before she enters a room. It’s possibly an infringement of some rule or code that he’s sniffing at his co-workers. But he can’t very well help himself. Not when she smells so—

“Well, I see you’re finally letting your rangers have a go with the jaegers, Liam.”

Liam. He’s wondered at how potentially unprofessional it is that she calls him by his first name the way she does; at least when it’s just the two of them, sometimes even in the tech room. He can’t remember a time when she didn’t. Jade Amelia Thirlwall is the type of woman who invites you to be comfortable with her, to open yourself up—he thinks it’s the kindness, this sort of ineffable sweetness that emanates from her long-lashed eyes and hits you right in the forehead like a drop of _kaiju_ slime and burns you to the core. Which is a horrible image that he promptly vows never to share with anyone else. He was never the poetic sort.

“Yes, Ms Thirlwall.” Always with the formalities. “They look good.”

She grins, and taps her ever-present pen against the touchscreen dig-I-pad she totes around with her wherever she goes. “Yes, well, they just better not mess with those machines. I’ve recently re-programmed Red Dragon, got Marshal Mori to add foot spikes and a StunCore 500 digital plasma reactor. She’s beautiful now, not that she wasn’t before. I just really don’t want to have to go through all of that again.”

He nods.

“How,” she starts, uncharacteristically hesitant, “How is he doing?” He knows exactly who she’s talking about. Of the people on-base, she is probably the only other person who understands what happened to Harry, the magnitude of it.

He sighs, and it feels like it’s the first time he can even acknowledge how worried he is about this test—a routine run-through and a simple patrol mission to stretch the Red Dragon’s legs. It’ll be the first time Harry’s done anything substantial in a jaeger since Gemma died. And Liam has to be honest; he’s not sure how he’ll handle it. The only thing stopping him from calling this to a halt is the reports he’s read from all of Malik and Styles’ training sessions and the few he’s observed himself. The notable improvement in Harry’s sense of equilibrium for lack of a better word the past few weeks—even though he knows Harry’d probably punch him in the face if he knew he was keeping tabs. And, he can’t forget, the whiplash of energy even he’d felt when he stood back and watched them meet for the first time.

It wasn’t in the rule books, the connection that some rangers developed, not the deeper, more intense aspects at least, the co-dependency, the constant awareness that went beyond a simple synaptic link. Everyone knew that siblings made good co-pilots and that part of that had to do with the pre-established bond they had. Any family really. Spouses, life partners or long-made friends worked well too.

But sometimes, strangers became co-pilots—no prior relationship to build on, no safety net, just two people forming a palpable, lightning-blind connection with each other, often without even realising how real, how potent it could become.

He’d seen the two of them look at each other in front of his desk and it had been tangible, the thing between the two of them. And he’d known there was something there, felt it. Even had to bite back the spike of envy as he remembered his own first meeting with—

“He’ll be fine,” he says shortly out and continues, brusque and to the point, “I wouldn’t let him out there if I didn’t think he was ready.”

He cringes inwardly. He didn’t mean to be so abrupt. When he looks up at Jade— _Ms Thirlwall_ —contrition on his tongue, he finds her snickering at him, shoulders shaking and eyes alight with her amusement.

“What?” he says.

She shakes her head. “So serious, Marshal.” Puffing her out her chest like a proud bantam cock, she folds her delicate features into a heavy-browed expression, and barks in an unnaturally deep voice, “I wouldn’t let him if I didn’t think he was ready!”

He can’t even help himself, he just laughs and she joins with him. He’s never noticed it before now but he quite likes it when she laughs; it has a sweet sound to it, like chimes on the wind. He likes it even better the way their laughter sounds together, and he doesn’t pause to break down _why_ that is, he just enjoys it.

She reaches out to punch him lightly on the shoulder and says, a soft smile painting her delicate features, “You don’t have to take yourself so seriously all the time, Liam. Especially when there’s no one watching you.”

“ _You_ ’re watching me,” he mumbles.

The punch to his shoulder has turned into a light caress that drifts down his arm and lingers on his biceps. He follows the movement with a gulp, and looks back up at her when she says with a low hum, “Hm, but I don’t really count, do I?”

He’s not quite sure what that means but before he can ask, she’s sauntering passed him towards the Technical Command Support Centre. She glances back at him to see if he’s following, and says with a little smile that brings out the dimple in her left cheek, “You coming?”

And he does trail in after her and the waft of strawberry that she leaves in her wake like a line of breadcrumbs—as if he could resist.

 

 

**there’s nothing worse**

Zayn isn’t nervous. He doesn’t examine too closely why that is.

But he does feel a twinge when Harry steps into Red Dragon’s Conn-Pod in his drive suit.

He’s got eyes, hasn’t he? And he doesn’t think there are very many people who’d be able to resist Harry Styles in fatigues, let alone having him in the newly-designed government-issue armour—his in a mix of black, a deep scarlet and warm bronze. The metal suit fits onto his tall frame like a second skin, and Zayn looks at the way it clings to his shoulders, outlines the lean length of his torso and has to turn away before he starts salivating like this ravening wolf he saw in an old-school cartoon on television once.

He shakes his head, now really isn’t the time for distractions. Planting his gunmetal grey-shod feet firm on his platform, he lets the tech crew attach the feedback cradle into the neck of his suit, cabling them into the interface drivers that transmit their nerve impulses straight into Red Dragon.

Harry stands beside him, arms and legs spread for balance as their suits are cybernetically linked to the jaeger. A holographic imaging screen that will be theirs and the jaeger’s eyes springs above the command console.

“We’re locked in and ready to go,” Zayn says.

“Looking good, Red Dragon. Let’s start this slow, all right, give us some routine movement, see how she’s feeling.” This came from Jade, although they can’t see her, they know she’s probably the most important person in the tech room, monitoring every bit of data they and the machine give out.

_Jaeger Team, Red Dragon, Styles and Malik, initiating neural handshake in 10—9—8…._

++++

 

 

Their first real test.

And Harry loses it. He loses it completely.

It starts off well enough. He’s done this before, knows to expect the wash of memories, can hear a voice— _her voice_ —warning him, “Just watch the memories go by, Harry, like they’re not yours, okay? Don’t chase the rabbit.”

But no matter how prepared he is, or thinks he is for this moment—he isn’t.

First he sees Gemma laughing at him, she is seventeen and he is fourteen, and there’s a bandage on her arm and cut on her cheek that will scar. This is the morning life begins, he thinks, because everything else before that is a pained blur while this is clear-sharp and blindingly bright. Then she’s nineteen and he is sixteen and she’s telling him she got accepted into an exclusive IJPP, that she has to leave but she’ll be waiting for him, she will. Then she’s twenty-three and Harry’s twenty, and he’s been accepted too, and she’s showing him the ropes, promising him that they’ll drive a jaeger together one day—something with the word ‘red’ in it because it’s her favourite colour. And then the images are sliding by in a flurry and it’s too much, it’s too much, and Harry starts to scream.

“He’s pulling out of alignment—dammit, he’s pulling out.”

“Come on, Harry, relax. Breathe, I’ve got you. Don’t get stuck—.”

He hears the voices but he can no longer identify who or what is speaking and he slips under the force of the current.

 

++++

 

“I’ve got you. Don’t get stuck, come on—don’t follow the rabbit.” Zayn shouts at Harry from his platform.

Harry doesn’t hear him at all. Of course he doesn’t.

Zayn can hear Jade’s panicked voice telling him to bring Harry back before it’s too late. He steps off his platform, careful not to dislodge himself from his own connection to Red Dragon and allows himself to fall into the memory that’s captured his co-pilot. He keeps himself tethered to the present, he can’t afford to get lost too.

He moves and presses his helmeted forehead against Harry’s until he’s big enough and close enough that he’s all that Harry will see, even through the Plexiglas visor. But Harry doesn’t see him, he _can’t_. He’s already somewhere else. Zayn leans away from his face to see the memory-version of Harry, younger, leaner, bird-like shoulders hunched with a slight softness to his chin that isn’t there anymore. His eyes are bloodshot and there are tears scoring his cheeks, and Zayn’s not sure he’s ever seen him cry. His arm has plaster cast on it, it looks like it’s been badly broken. He’s standing in front of a monitor in a tech room, behind him is Jade, younger too, her anxious eyes trained on the image transmitter screen. And Marshal Payne, brow creased with worry as he barks orders.

Zayn looks up at the screen too and there’s a _kaiju_ is screeching, gnarled reptilian fists side-swiping into the head of a jaeger—the Red Dragon. The sound of those claws scraping against metal sheeting is probably exactly what hell sounds like. He’s sure of it. The sparks that follow gleam like demon-eyes in the dark. There’s a panicked cry that catches on the wind and floats away beneath the crush of thousands of tonnes of metal crashing to the ground.

The Harry in the memory is screaming. Screaming louder than anything Zayn’s ever heard. And they’re not in the tech room anymore, instead they are by a grave, newly dug, the top of it overlaid with pebbled rocks—no one has time to tend grass-laid graves anymore.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I—I should’ve been there. It’s my fault. It’s me—it’s me,” Harry is hitting his face against the brick ground, leaving speckles of blood on the rubble and it hurts to watch him, hurts to watch and not be able to do anything to stop it.

He yells, “Come on, Harry, you have to stop.”

A mad bleep in the Conn-Pod registers in Zayn’s mind and he turns to the urgent amber flash.

_Weapon system engaged. Plasma canons initialising._

Harry’s hands are steel-knuckled fists and Zayn can see the strain in his face, the way his eyes have become angry. He raises them, both the memory-him and the real-him clad in the warped steel suit, the rage that gushes out of him is overwhelming, even for Zayn, and he thinks for a second he might drown in it, but he can’t. He has to stop this.

The cannons position themselves with a loud, metallic purr and there’s a smile on Harry’s face that looks dangerously hollow. It doesn’t look like Harry at all, in fact.

“Go to failsafe!” Jade yells. And Zayn, in a last ditch effort, grabs hold of Harry’s neck and screams in his face, “Come on, Harry, come back—I need you, please.”

And then Harry is blinking, blinking like someone waking from a dream and the cannons are winding down with a deflated groan, the viciously bright plasma light they’d emitted as they prepared to launch fading, but slowly.

Harry looks up at him and the look in his eyes is so lost, grief-torn and ashamed that it cuts him to the quick. He falls to his knees and yanks off his helmet, breathing heavily and every inhalation sounds like it’s being dragged from the hell-pit of those memories.

“You’re okay,” Zayn says quietly, hands on Harry’s crouched back, reassuring but inadequately so, he thinks. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

++++

He drops Harry off at his room that night. He’s not sure why, just seems like a good thing to do. And he’s worried, has this itching need to make sure that he’s okay. He saw Harry’s memories, and they live inside him now, and he doesn’t want to leave his partner alone—not yet.

They got a real talking-to from Payne. Zayn winces as he remembers the threat to ground them indefinitely, the reminder that Harry—in effect, both of them—had jeopardised the lives of hundreds, thousands of people. He’s thankful Jade intervened; laying a calming hand on the Marshal’s arm and urging him to let them leave, resume the lecture and possible punishment the next morning.

Harry didn’t anything the entire time. Just held himself stiff and quiet, like a frozen shadow. That had disturbed Zayn more than anything else.

When they get to the door, Harry unlocks it with a swipe of his identification card. He turns back to look at Zayn and neither of them says a word for a moment.

Then he murmurs, “Thank you.” And Zayn wants to hug him, hold his hand, anything—except he’s not sure how to initiate it. Not without making things plain and he’s not sure either of them is ready for that.

So he just nods. Reaches up to squeeze his shoulder and the tense set of muscles at his neck, draw some of the grief out, or let him know that he gets it. Maybe not _it_ -it but he does get it.

Harry nods, and a subdued smile stretches his lips and fails to light his eyes.

Then Zayn just rushes forward and hugs him, no second-guessing, just does it. And Harry’s body slumps forward into his. And Zayn lets him, bears the weight, absorbs it, makes it his.

He thinks that if there’s two of them together, just maybe they can stop each other from drowning.

 

++++

 

Everyone knows who they are now apparently. Zayn can tell from the sidelong glances, sneers and the snide remarks they get from rangers and everyone else in the Shatterdome with something to say.

He’s fine with it. It’s not like he doesn’t get it—they could all be dead right now if Harry hadn’t been stopped in time. It’s human for them to be angry. And the things people say about him tend to slide down his back, he doesn’t let himself care about it—just goes along with his business and lets other people take care of theirs.

But he worries about Harry. Has taken to sitting with him at meal times while they’re suspended from training for a couple of weeks.

And once, when someone says something particularly harsh, he reaches out and touches Harry’s shoulder, which is bunched and stiff, ready to lash out. He just needs to let him know he’s there. And Harry looks at him with a grateful smile that makes his heart heat up. And they walk away side-by-side.

 

++++

 

They play a lot of golf in those two weeks. Zayn even manages to hit a ball or three.

 

 

**i’m so wrapped up in a daze**

The first time they kiss, it’s rushed and biting and bruising, and leaves them both panting and laughing at the complete _lack_ of shock of it. They were heading here, to this very point.

It was always just a matter of when.

 

**where i felt most alive**

The second time they kiss, Harry drags Zayn into a nook in the deepest corner of the library and runs his tongue along his slightly chapped lower lip, tastes the remnants of the cigarette he smoked before dinner, the mint-flavoured ice cream he had for dessert—a special treat in the mess hall—and they both sigh into it, boneless-sweet.

 

**i’m falling down when you’re around**

The third time they kiss, they don’t stop at a kiss.

They don’t stop until they’re sprawled, Harry on top, heavy and solid, Zayn below, lean hips cradling the weight above. Their fatigues shoved down to their knees, callused fingers bringing each other off with the two of them panting hard and fast, sweeping pearly precome across a swollen-flush tip, fisting around a pulsing dick and feeling the blood thrum hot against the taut skin and then slick spurts, the two of them, hips stuttering, hopelessly out of sync in this one thing— and catching their breath with their mouths flush, tongues tangled.

They lie there together, and they talk. Exchange stupid stories, stories the two of them already know, have already seen in the drift, skimmed passed as the memories eddied around them.

Harry notches his head on the spot between Zayn’s chin and shoulder, runs his nose along the vein at his neck, blood hot against his lips. He breathes in and lets his lover’s scent become a solid thing on this tongue and starts to speak.

“When most of the British Isles went under, you know where I was?”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, sensing that this is not a question that needs answering. Harry’s letting him listen to a story he’s seen already in flashes, that he knows deep in his bones like it’s his own. But the speaking of it, saying it out loud is like magic, an incantation. The spluttering candle on the floor in the middle of the room casts long shadows against the walls, there’s nothing but the hushed rustle of wind followed by the tinny cackle of air pushed through hollow water pipes, and it’s a sort of music.

So Zayn listens.

“I was asleep. I went to bed. My mother, I remember, she kissed me on the forehead the way she did every night and it tickled and I couldn’t stop laughing. I mean, I was fourteen and she was still kissing me at bedtime like I was a kid. And then she said, ‘I love you,’ and I said it back.”

Harry’s eyes are wet. He’s always cried so easily in the dark—the few times he and the other cadets go to watch the old-time movies on the big screen at the cinema, he’ll start weeping at the most nonsensical thing: a pair of lovers kissing, a father hugging a child, a sunset untainted by dark red streaks of blood. It’s safe in a cinema where no one can see you. But here when it’s so quiet, and it’s just him and Zayn, it feels like he’s disrobing, and the pathetic sniffle is just him, naked and exposed in a way he hasn’t ever been really. Hasn’t allowed himself to be with anyone else.

“I woke up in some hospital wing on a ship I didn’t even know the name of. And they were all dead. It was just me and Gem, no one else.” _And then it was just me_ , he doesn’t say. But the words skitter blackly around the walls of this tiny confessional room like a bat.

Zayn runs a hand through the hair on Harry’s head and draws his face up for a firm kiss. The goal isn’t to seduce but to let Harry feel with the strong swirl of his tongue, the press of fingers against his scalp, the vibration of the moan he lets out and how it shudders through Harry all the way to his fingertips—that he’s here, and he’s not going anywhere.

 

 

**violent colours so obscene**

There’s a spot by the wall alongside the length of Zayn’s bed covered in symbols Harry doesn’t understand and doodles, scribbles, some inane and others oddly pretty, sweeping wings that look set to take flight, a detailed rose in bloom, a figure in a sweeping cape, elegant fingers in repose, an eye.

“I didn’t know you drew,” he says, and he takes a bite out of Zayn’s jaw where the stubble’s just starting to prickle, loves the bristle of it against his kiss-chapped lips.

Zayn snorts, “I don’t draw—not too well, anyway. It’s just—something to pass the time.”

“Hm.” Harry runs a finger along the feathered curve of a wing. “Well, you’re kind of good.” He brings his finger down along Zayn’s arm, down until he links their hands, and says, “You should practice or something, then you can draw me—.”

Zayn rolls his eyes but stills when Harry finishes.

“— _naked_.”

“Oh.” He says, his mind envisioning it, he licks his lips. “Well, that’s hardly fair. What do I get in return for drawing you? It’s hard work, you know.”

The smile that creeps up Harry’s face can only be described as lecherous when he leans up to reply, voice hushed as though the walls have ears, “Well, I give incredible head—everyone says so.”

Zayn holds himself very still, or tries to, but it’s hard with the lewd promise in those whispered words.

Harry presses a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss on Zayn’s chin, and then down to his shoulder, and then a furred spot on his chest just beside a pearled aureole before peeking up through his tossed curls. “You can test me out if you like.” That agile tongue slides against Zayn’s ribcage, right above his heart, which is hurtling by now, and he says, “I’ll even let you ride my face—hard.”

 _Fuck it_. Zayn tugs him up by that coiled hair and kisses him thoroughly. And then just as suddenly, he pulls back, brow arched in challenge. “Prove it, then.”

He _does_. Again, and again.

 

 

**take my badge but my heart remains**

They’re a last resort.

Harry can tell by the way Liam’s pursing his mouth like he just bit into a lemon that they’re really the last of the last, and the marshal would give anything to say “No”, possibly followed up with a “Get lost”, and order Red Dragon to stay put.

But there’s no other option.

There are five Level 6 and higher _kaiju_ wreaking havoc mere miles off the coast, and every jaeger team available is engaged—the Riach brothers, Edwards and Pinnock, Tomlinson and Niall and more. Some have already gone aground.

When Liam relents, finally, and gives the signal for them to go ahead and suit up, Harry doesn’t say thank you, he just nods and looks at him carefully, asks without words for his friend to trust.

They can do this.

 

++++

 

They’re assigned to the Hammerhead, Level Seven, a massive pterodactyl-like beast with blood-red eyes and a scream that could tear worlds in half.

The fight is long, takes them all the way passed what’s left of the Philippines and deep into the Indian Ocean. Underwater, sound is different, clogged-up and muffled but the drag hinders neither the jaeger nor the _kaiju_.

The _kaiju_ scores a wickedly-curved claw along Red Dragon’s torso and snaps the central supply system, cutting off half their power supply. Both Harry and Zayn hunch at the impact, the blow sending messages down their synapses so they feel the pain—only a shadow of it—Red Dragon does.

“Shit, we’re running out of power, Zayn, we’re going to have to—.”

“I know,” Zayn grinds out before he can finish. And Harry smiles a bit because of course he knows, they’re in each other’s heads.

_Sabre formation engaged._

 

_Plasma canons engaged. Atomizer missiles engaged. Initialising in 10—9—8_

 

This was no time to hold back, if they’re going to go down, they’ll have to go guns blazing.

Neither of them can think of a better way to die anyway.

 

++++

 

The fight ends with the scream of the _kaiju_ flung back against a vacant island, Zayn checks the coordinates: Madagascar, which had mostly been rendered uninhabitable fifteen or so years ago. But there was still a stretch of solid beach.

He looks at Harry and they start laughing, relieved, and even a bit hysterical at the edges. Both of them know—have known for a long time—what they signed up for with this job. Dying inside a jaeger, doing what they were born to do, what they’ve shed blood and tears to do, is a good way to go. But in that moment, still panting in the aftermath of battle, adrenaline-sharp, it feels _really_ good to be alive.

The intercom buzzes and they see Marshal Payne’s shaky image on the screen—something’s definitely wrong with their power.

“Well done, rangers. Now, I need you to meet at the pick-up point, your location is too far for us to retrieve you. Your power is low, so you’re going to have to—.”

The intercom flickers again and then blinks out.

“Oh shit,” Harry says, “We’re grounded. Home Base, do you copy, we are grounded.”

All they get is a crackle of static before the radio fades out entirely, and the engine hums to silence too, the lights wavering until the back-up internal generator kicks in and the control pod is lit dimly in shades of amber-yellow.

“Shit—fuck,” Zayn mutters as he detaches himself from the neural bridge. “So what do we do?”

Harry breathes in once, twice, and says quietly, “We wait, nothing else we _can_ do.”

Regular jaegers take approximately one day to soak up enough solar energy to power themselves up when they’re down. Red Dragon’s taken more than a typical beating; Zayn knows it as well as if he’d taken the blows himself. Right flank burnt out—if the _kaiju_ had gotten even one inch deeper with its toxic sludge, the whole leg would’ve been cut off, torso near-gone too, and engines down at less than 5% power. They weren’t going anywhere.

At least there’s food, and the emergency cache holds at least a pair of blankets and canisters of water, inflatable mattresses for situations just like this. They’ll have to camp out in the Conn-Pod for the night and into the next day until they’ve recouped enough power to make the rendezvous point.

He looks at Harry who is already detaching his armour to reveal a wrinkled, sweat-stained vest underneath. Zayn gulps and his eyes drift without hesitation to Harry’s arms, muscles rippling and the scattering of tattoos curling around the biceps and up toward his armpit, the wide expanse of his chest barely-covered by the ratty sleeveless shirt, his nipples peeking, dark tan-pink. And just like that, in the space of a second, Zayn’s dick is swelling in his tight-bind suit and his breath catches in his throat, heart sluggish and loud in his ears.

_Is this what this feels like?_

Because it’s not just lust—simple lust he can parse without even trying. But this, this crippling feeling, an overwhelming rush that feels something akin to the first fleeting seconds of a neural handshake. Dizzying, the swirl of images and sense-memories that pierce right to the core and leave you gasping, the impression of someone burrowing inside you and taking up residence there in the most secret part. At once welcome to be so connected to another consciousness it might as well be your own, and horrifying. And all he wants to do is touch, and taste, and feel until he can’t anymore.

And the thought of _that_ is more perplexing to Zayn than anything. Except it’s Harry.

It’s Harry.

They are halfway across the world, grounded on some derelict beach, the sea roiling in four cardinal directions and nothing but empty wastelands besides. And Zayn doesn’t care.

“What’s that look for?”

Zayn hadn’t realised that he’d been staring at Harry undressing for close to five minutes. But now his co-pilot is standing there in a pair of standard issue trousers and a vest, his drive suit crumpled at his feet as he shoots Zayn a quizzical look.

Zayn looks at the suit and then his gaze veers upwards to Harry’s face, a casual sweep of his body which looks more compact and yet powerful without the protective covering, and he doesn’t think, he doesn’t speak—he doesn’t do anything but take. Two quick strides, and his hands are yanking Harry into his armoured body and his open mouth and he’s doing his best to lace their tongues together.

Harry moans into the kiss and doesn’t waste a second, his fingers winding their way through Zayn’s sweat-damp hair and pulling him closer. When he feels the bite of cold steel against him, a whiny sound sneaks out of his throat and he pulls back, his hands scrabbling across the slippery metal and pressing the release button, pulling at the breastplate. Zayn keeps chasing at his mouth as if he can’t get enough of the taste of him.

Harry lets out a frustrated sigh, he’ll get nowhere with this if Zayn doesn’t cooperate. “Off—I want this off.”

Zayn’s tongue is licking a wet stripe along his clavicle, tasting the swallows on either side of his chest before pressing a soft kiss on his left nipple, then a vicious scrape of teeth against goose-pimpled skin. Harry trembles but he can be stubborn too, he tugs at Zayn’s collar and mumbles, “As hot as you fucking me in that uniform is right now—I need it off.”

Zayn snorts and looks up at Harry, his eyes shiny with laughter. “Hot, hunh?”

Harry nods. “I’ve had fantasies of you in that library, in your drive suit, taking me all over those precious books of yours.”

Zayn bursts into laughter at that. “Really, Styles? I’m a little put off that I haven’t seen this particular fantasy in that filthy thing you call a brain.”

“You like my filthy brain, though.” He’s moved on to trying to pull at Zayn’s sleeves as if that’ll work.

Zayn can’t disagree with that. “I like a lot of things about you.”

And perhaps that’s the closest he might get to saying it out loud. Putting words and letters around this feeling. It’s not like Harry doesn’t know, even a cursory trawl through his mind during the meld would lay bare just how he feels—it had from the start.

Harry hears what he doesn’t say and he stops with his fitful fingers at Zayn’s gauntlets and tugs him close by the wrist. This time, the kiss is soft and delicate, and Harry’s hands frame Zayn’s jaw and it feels like he never wants to let go.

Zayn strips off quick after that, ignoring the pout on Harry’s face when he declines to put on a real show like the men at _Mr Long’s Muscle-Mania_ do on Saturdays. He hasn’t even got his boots off before Harry sinks to his knees in front of him and grazes his teeth along his hip, biting at the large black heart tattoo there until Zayn winces. Then he shifts inwards until his breath hits the tip of Zayn’s dick.

He looks up at Zayn with a little smirk, and says, “I’ve been wanting to do this too, you know, suck you off in a Conn-Pod.”

“You seem to have a very long list of fantasies, I’m not sure I can keep up, babe.”

Harry grins, dimple out, and ducks forward to lap at the flushed tip of Zayn’s cock and the bubble of precome there. He moans at the taste before he leans in again and wraps his plush lips around the head, tongue flat against the perineum.

Zayn’s knees buckle and he has to slam a hand on the wall behind him for purchase. Harry doesn’t let him fall, though. He does start bobbing his head in a slow, languid rhythm, as though they have all the time in the world, sinking lower on each pass. When his nose hits the thick hair at the root and Zayn feels the suction of Harry’s throat on his cock, like a wet, tight mouth within an already slick mouth he lets out a long, low, “Fuck.” The word pulled out of the deepest recesses of his throat, winded.

Harry moans and the vibration pushes Zayn up on his tip-toes. He nudges Harry off abruptly, bites his lip at the wet sound, and drags him to his feet. Kissing the taste of himself off of Harry’s tongue, he pulls back and whispers, “I want you, Harry.”

Harry nods desperately and presses in with a biting kiss that Zayn breaks off so that he’ll understand what he’s trying to say. He reaches down to wrap his hands around Harry’s thick cock, sets up a slow rhythm from root to tip, fingers tight because he wants this so badly. “I want you— _in_ me.”

 

++++

 

For someone as clumsy and erratic as Harry can be, he’s certainly good at this. Unsurprising given how well he handles a jaeger, but still.

Zayn claws at the rumpled blankets beneath and curls his toes with a hiccupped breath when Harry slips one finger inside his ass, clenches down on the single digit with a wince. Harry’s gentle, whispers something sweet and low against Zayn’s hip before he adds another carefully-slicked finger—how or why he’s walking around with a half-used bottle of lube is a mystery Zayn doesn’t care to untangle right then.

He hisses when Harry adds another finger, all three burrowing inside him, scissoring with increasing width until he lets out a jagged moan. And then he slides those fingers out and positions his dick, slippery with hastily-applied lube.

Harry takes it slow and steady, first, swollen tip slipping past Zayn’s gaping ring of muscle. And then a series of thrusts that sear Zayn’s insides all the way until he’s buried to the root. Zayn clenches his eyelids shut, and he breathes out through his nose at the pain, his dick softens too as if his body’s not quite sure it wants this anymore, this relentless invasion. It’s been a while, clearly.

He opens his eyes and looks up to see Harry poised and still, gaze focused on him with a solemn and soft-petalled emotion that Zayn’s almost too scared to name. He’s breathing heavily, strained with sweat dripping down his cheek, and Zayn can see how the muscles in his shoulders are tensed tight as he _waits_. Just waits until he can see Zayn’s face relax, the pain dwindling a bit.

Zayn nods, corner of his mouth lifts in a crooked smile. “Don’t stop now.”

Even then, Harry doesn’t start fucking into him. Instead, he wraps his hand around Zayn’s flagging length, fingers still damp and oily from the lube, and strokes him, until he’s hard, blood-thick and ready. Only when he’s got Zayn gasping, begging even, inner muscles clenching around his cock, _does_ he start.

The first thrust is shallow and they both whimper. Harry notches his arms under the backs of Zayn’s knees and pushes his legs up and close to his chest. The change in angle lets him sink deeper, right to the hilt and he slurs on the down-surge, “S’good, so fucking good.”

Zayn just breathes his name, half-awed at how fucking good the stretch feels, and half-delirious because he just wants—

“Come on, Harry, fuck me.”

No second invitation needed.

It seems that holding back the way he did pushed Harry to the edge of even his apparently legendary patience because he starts to fuck like he’s got nothing to lose. He’s unpredictable with it, too, doesn’t let them settle into a rhythm. It’s slow, deep plunges that morph into slick, rapid thrusts, balls slap up against Zayn’s ass obscenely, and then dogged lunges that rock the both of them and push Zayn’s head up against the wall.

And it feels so good, Zayn tries to say so repeatedly, but the words keep choking in his spit-dry mouth and he’s just doing his best to remember to breathe and hold onto Harry’s back as the muscles there ripple and flex.

They really don’t last long this time.

Zayn can’t when Harry’s whispering pure filth in his ear, telling him to let go because all _he_ wants to do is to come inside him so bad, all over him, fucking _choke_ him with it.

Then Zayn’s jerking himself off furiously, moaning in agreement to every single thing Harry says—he could be promising to kill someone for all he knows but he doesn’t care. And he comes, streaks of it painting his chest, a few hitting Harry’s too, and a groan that sounds like something dying in his throat.

Harry pulls out quickly, and on his knees, pumps a fist around his dick, lets out a string of wheezy curses that make even Zayn, fucked-out as he is, flush. He comes, strings landing whitely against Zayn’s thighs. His kiss-swollen lips widen in a dirty, self-satisfied grin at the mess he’s made. He crawls up over Zayn’s prone body until their mouths are mere inches apart and says, gravel-voiced, “Way better than it’s ever been in my head.”

And flops in a damp, sliding squelch—come, sweat, whatever else—on top of him as they both chuckle, breathless.

 

 

**but i think it’s here to stay**

One advantage of living in a city teeming with people from every corner of the globe is the parties.

Zayn’s not even sure what this particular festivity is for—it’s probably evolved from a mishmash of a hundred different traditions. _The Mixer_ is lit up with coloured paper lanterns, there are streamers in bright greens, yellows, and blue hanging from the ceiling, plants that look like mistletoe or creeper vines are wrapped around the pillars situated around the room and the bar’s laden with hundreds of plastic cups full of mulled sake; there’s music, smoky and slinky filling up the space and a few people dancing, bodies close, eyes shut.

Zayn is also late, which anyone could’ve predicted that. And Harry is going to kill him. And then kiss him, probably, and pout until Zayn promises to do something nonsensical. It’ll either be sexual, like a furtive, whispered hand-job in the back corridor that leads to the toilets behind the bar. Or a demand that Zayn etch a new tattoo on his body to join the already random ink splattered all over his skin, a situation that will probably end in hungry, pain-wetted fucking anyway. One never quite knows with Harry and that’s one of Zayn’s favourite things.

He stands by the entrance and scans the room, tries to locate a tall person with a huge head of hair when someone to his left drawls, “Are you lost, shrimp?”

Zayn rolls his eyes and turns to see a flush-faced Louis who is well on his way to tipsy. “That non-joke stopped being funny years ago, you need new material, mate.”

Louis points at his chest as if gravely insulted.

Zayn asks, “So, what’s with you tonight?”

Louis shrugs and tilts the lip of his beer bottle in two directions—one side of the room, Niall Horan, his co-pilot, the other side, Eleanor Calder, co-owner of _The Mixer_ , and there’s a devilish glint in his blue eyes. “Really, both of them?” Louis nods and stage whispers, “Think I could convince them to—at the same time?”

With the number of times Zayn’s eyes roll in Louis’ company, he’s surprised he hasn’t developed permanent cornea damage. So he just laughs. “I don’t know whether to feel sorrier for you or them.”

“Neither—it’s New Year’s or Halloween or Solstice, I’m not entirely sure what we’re celebrating tonight. And I’m going to get laid. You should be congratulating me.”

Zayn shakes his head, his eyes darting around the room. Louis, noticing his distraction, says with a patronising poke on the shoulder, “If it’ll help any, I saw him walk upstairs to the balcony earlier.”

“Thanks,” Zayn shoots back, his body already moving towards the stairs—he can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed by how obvious he is. It’s something of a running joke by now.

He doesn’t get far before he’s stopped by Marshal Payne—Liam. He hasn’t gotten used to calling him that in casual settings but spending a little time with him and Harry after-hours is making it easier. They make idle chitchat for a few minutes and Zayn tries hard not to tap his foot in impatience.

A hand with red-lacquered fingernails wraps its way around Liam’s torso and Zayn watches as the marshal jerks and relaxes, grins as Jade, dressed in a bright red dress and a bow in her now-sage-coloured hair, slips under his arm and presses a kiss on his chin. Her lips leave a red smudge there but Liam doesn’t seem to mind. He tells Zayn to have a great time; lets Jade lead him out onto the dance floor.

Finally, he makes his way to the stairs, stopping by the bar to get a cup of mulled sake when Marshal Mori comes to stand beside him.

“I heard about your last mission, Mr Malik.” She says without preamble, “Well done—I’m proud of you.”

She can’t know what those words, all six of them, mean to him. Impulsively, he reaches out to hug her, his throat squeezed tight. She pats him on the back tenderly. “It appears that someone is looking for you.”

He pulls away and she angles her head towards Harry who is standing by the table of food with a little lost expression on his face as if he’s looking for someone. He smiles at people who come up to grab a drink, even offers a plate of snacks to them as though he’s being paid to serve at _The Mixer_ , but Zayn can see even from this distance that he’s crawling under his skin, waiting.

Zayn knows the feeling. It’s strange wanting another person so much, needing to be close and to let them be close. Yet it’s comforting to know he’s not alone in this.

He glances at the Marshal, suspicious. “You knew, didn’t you?” he asks, “That time when I came by to see you.”

She smiles and says, “Someone very wise once told me that the deeper the bond, the better you fight—never forget that.”

 

 

**that was a painful dance,  
now i got a second chance**

Harry gets scared sometimes, they both do.

But it’s when they’re lying in their narrow bunk as they often do, the creak of wind sliding under the gaps of the door, tinny whirr of the oft-broken air fan cooling their skin, blankets pooled at their bare feet because they don’t need them right then with shared body heat. And Zayn whispers— _I know you_ , _the real you_. The, I _’m not going anywhere_ , is left unsaid but Harry hears it all the same. That all those knotted fears uncoil inside of him like a tangle of thread, leaving nothing but stillness.

**Author's Note:**

> If you got to the end of this, you deserve a hug and a cookie. Thank you for any feedback you leave behind.


End file.
